Video transcoder with spatial resolution reduction

ABSTRACT

A method transcodes groups of macroblocks of a partially decoded input bitstream. The groups of macroblocks include intra-mode and inter-mode macroblocks. Each macroblock includes DCT coefficients, and at least one motion vector. The modes of each group of macroblocks are mapped to be identical only if there is an inter-mode block and an intra-mode macroblock in the group. If any of the macroblocks in the group are mapped, then the DCT coefficients and the motion vector for such mapped macroblocks are modified in accordance with the mapping to generate reduced-resolution macroblock for an output compressed bitstream to compensate for drift.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

[0001] This invention relates generally to the field of transcodingbitstreams, and more particularly to reducing spatial resolution whiletranscoding video bitstreams.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

[0002] Video compression enables the storing, transmitting, andprocessing of visual information with fewer storage, network, andprocessor resources. The most widely used video compression standardsinclude MPEG-1 for storage and retrieval of moving pictures, MPEG-2 fordigital television, and H.263 for video conferencing, see ISO/IEC11172-2:1993, “Information Technology—Coding of Moving Pictures andAssociated Audio for Digital Storage Media up to about 1.5 Mbit/s—Part2: Video,” D. LeGall, “MPEG: A Video Compression Standard for MultimediaApplications,” Communications of the ACM, Vol. 34, No. 4, pp. 46-58,1991, ISO/IEC 13818-2:1996, “Information Technology—Generic Coding ofMoving Pictures and Associated Audio Information—Part 2: Video,” 1994,ITU-T SG XV, DRAFT H.263, “Video Coding for Low Bitrate Communication,”1996, ITU-T SG XVI, DRAFT13 H.263+Q15-A-60 rev.0, “Video Coding for LowBitrate Communication,” 1997.

[0003] These standards are relatively low-level specifications thatprimarily deal with a spatial compression of images or frames, and thespatial and temporal compression of sequences of frames. As a commonfeature, these standards perform compression on a per frame basis. Withthese standards, one can achieve high compression ratios for a widerange of applications.

[0004] Newer video coding standards, such as MPEG-4 for multimediaapplications, see ISO/IEC 14496-2:1999, “Information technology—codingof audio/visual objects, Part 2: Visual,” allow arbitrary-shaped objectsto be encoded and decoded as separate video object planes (VOP). Theobjects can be visual, audio, natural, synthetic, primitive, compound,or combinations thereof. Also, there is a significant amount of errorresilience features built into this standard to allow for robusttransmission across error-prone channels, such as wireless channels.

[0005] The emerging MPEG-4 standard is intended to enable multimediaapplications, such as interactive video, where natural and syntheticmaterials are integrated, and where access is universal. In the contextof video transmission, these compression standards are needed to reducethe amount of bandwidth on networks. The networks can be wireless or theInternet. In any case, the network has limited capacity, and contentionfor scarce resources should be minimized.

[0006] A great deal of effort has been placed on systems and methodsthat enable devices to transmit the content robustly and to adapt thequality of the content to the available network resources. When thecontent is encoded, it is sometimes necessary to further decode thebitstream before it can be transmitted through the network at a lowerbit-rate or resolution.

[0007] As shown in FIG. 1, this can be accomplished by a transcoder 100.In a simplest implementation, the transcoder 100 includes a cascadeddecoder 110 and encoder 120. A compressed input bitstream 101 is fullydecoded at an input bit-rate R_(in), then encoded at an output bit-rateR_(out) 102 to produce the output bitstream 103. Usually, the outputrate is lower than the input rate. In practice, full decoding and fullencoding in a transcoder is not done due to the high complexity ofencoding the decoded bitstream.

[0008] Earlier work on MPEG-2 transcoding has been published by Sun etal., in “Architectures for MPEG compressed bitstream scaling,” IEEETransactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, April 1996.There, four methods of rate reduction, with varying complexity andarchitecture, were described.

[0009]FIG. 2 shows a first example method 200, which is referred to asan open-loop architecture. In this architecture, the input bitstream 201is only partially decoded. More specifically, macroblocks of the inputbitstream are variable-length decoded (VLD) 210 and inverse quantized220 with a fine quantizer Q₁, to yield discrete cosine transform (DCT)coefficients. Given the desired output bit-rate 202, the DCT blocks area re-quantized by a coarser level quantizer Q₂ of the quantizer 230.These re-quantized blocks are then variable-length coded (VLC) 240, anda new output bitstream 203 at a lower rate is formed. This scheme ismuch simpler than the scheme shown in FIG. 1 because the motion vectorsare re-used and an inverse DCT operation is not needed. Note, here thechoice of Q₁ and Q₂ strictly depend on rate characteristics of thebitstream. Other factors, such as possibly, spatial characteristics ofthe bitstream are not considered.

[0010]FIG. 3 shows a second example method 300. This method is referredto as a closed-loop architecture. In this method, the input videobitstream is again partially decoded, i.e., macroblocks of the inputbitstream are variable-length decoded (VLD) 310, and inverse quantized320 with Q₁ to yield discrete cosine transform (DCT) coefficients 321.In contrast to the first example method described above, correction DCTcoefficients 332 are added 330 to the incoming DCT coefficients 321 tocompensate for the mismatch produced by re-quantization. This correctionimproves the quality of the reference frames that will eventually beused for decoding. After the correction has been added, the newly formedblocks are re-quantized 340 with Q₂ to satisfy a new rate, andvariable-length coded 350, as before. Note, again Q₁ and Q₂ are ratebased.

[0011] To obtain the correction component 332, the re-quantized DCTcoefficients are inverse quantized 360 and subtracted 370 from theoriginal partially decoded DCT coefficients. This difference istransformed to the spatial domain via an I inverse DCT (IDCT) 365 andstored into a frame memory 380. The motion vectors 381 associated witheach incoming block are then used to recall the corresponding differenceblocks, such as in motion compensation 290. The corresponding blocks arethen transformed via the DCT 332 to yield the correction component. Aderivation of the method shown in FIG. 3 is described in “A frequencydomain video transcoder for dynamic bit-rate reduction of MPEG-2bitstreams,” by Assuncao et al., IEEE Transactions on Circuits andSystems for Video Technology, pp. 953-957, 1998.

[0012] Assuncao et al. also described an alternate method for the sametask. In the alternative method, they used a motion compensation (MC)loop operating in the frequency domain for drift compensation.Approximate matrices were derived for fast computation of the MC blocksin the frequency domain. A Lagrangian optimization was used to calculatethe best quantizer scales for transcoding. That alternative methodremoved the need for the IDCT/DCT components.

[0013] According to prior art compression standards, the number of bitsallocated for encoding texture information is controlled by aquantization parameter (QP). The above methods are similar in thatchanging the QP based on information that is contained in the originalbitstream reduces the rate of texture bits. For an efficientimplementation, the information is usually extracted directly from thecompressed domain and can include measures that relate to the motion ofmacroblocks or residual energy of DCT blocks. The methods describesabove are only applicable for bit-rate reduction. Besides bit-ratereduction, other types of transformation of the bitstream can also beperformed. For example, object-based transformations have been describedin U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/504,323, “Object-Based BitstreamTranscoder,” filed on Feb. 14, 2000 by Vetro et al. Transformations onthe spatial resolution have been described in “Heterogeneous videotranscoding to lower spatio-temporal resolutions, and different encodingformats,” IEEE Transaction on Multimedia, June 2000, by Shanableh andGhanbari.

[0014] It should be noted these methods produce bitstreams at a reducedspatial resolution reduction that lack quality, or are accomplished withhigh complexity. Also, proper consideration has not been given to themeans by which reconstructed macroblocks are formed. This can impactboth the quality and complexity, and is especially important whenconsidering reduction factors different than two. Moreover, thesemethods do not specify any architectural details. Most of the attentionis spent on various means of scaling motion vectors by a factor of two.

[0015]FIG. 4 shows the details of a method 400 for transcoding an inputbitstream to an output bitstream 402 at a lower spatial resolution. Thismethod is an extension of the method shown in FIG. 1, but with thedetails of the decoder 110 and encoder 120 shown, and a down-samplingblock 410 between the decoding and encoding processes. The decoder 110performs a partial decoding of the bitstream. The down-sampler reducesthe spatial resolution of groups of partially macroblocks. Motioncompensation 420 in the decoder uses the full-resolution motion vectorsmv_(f) 421, while motion compensation 430 in the encoder useslow-resolution motion vectors mv_(r) 431. The low-resolution motionvectors are either estimated from the down-sampled spatial domain framesy_(n) ¹ 403, or mapped from the full-resolution motion vectors. Furtherdetail of the transcoder 400 are described below.

[0016]FIG. 5 shows the details of an open-loop method 500 fortranscoding an input bitstream 501 to an output bitstream 502 at a lowerspatial resolution. In this method, the video bitstream is againpartially decoded, i.e., macroblocks of the input bitstream arevariable-length decoded (VLD) 510 and inverse quantized 520 to yielddiscrete cosine transform (DCT) coefficients, these steps are wellknown.

[0017] The DCT macroblocks are then down-sampled 530 by a factor of twoby masking the high frequency coefficients of each 8×8 (2³×2³)luminanceblock in the 16×16 (2⁴×2⁴) macroblock to yield four 4×4 DCT blocks, seeU.S. Pat. No. 5,262,854, “Low-resolution HDTV receivers,” issued to Ngon Nov. 16, 1993. In other words, down-sampling turns a group of blocks,for example four, into a group of four blocks of a smaller size.

[0018] By performing down-sampling in the transcoder, the transcodermust take additional steps to re-form a compliant 16×16 macroblock,which involves transformation back to the spatial domain, then again tothe DCT domain. After the down-sampling, blocks are re-quantized 540using the same quantization level, and then variable length coded 550.No methods have been described to perform rate control on the reducedresolution blocks.

[0019] To perform motion vector mapping 560 from full 559 to reduced 561motion vectors, several methods suitable for frame-based motion vectorshave been described in the prior art. To map from four frame-basedmotion vectors, i.e., one for each macroblock in a group, to one motionvector for the newly formed 16×16 macroblock, simple averaging or medianfilters can be applied. This is referred to as a 4:1 mapping.

[0020] However, certain compression standards, such as MPEG-4 and H.263,support advanced prediction modes that allow one motion vector per 8×8block. In this case, each motion vector is mapped from a 16×16macroblock in the original resolution to an 8×8 block in the reducedresolution macroblock. This is referred to as a 1:1 mapping.

[0021]FIG. 6 shows possible mappings 600 of motion vector from a groupof four 16×16 macroblocks 601 to either one 16×16 macroblock 602 or four8×8 macroblocks 603. It is inefficient to always use the 1:1 mappingbecause more bits are used to code four motion vectors. Also, ingeneral, the extension to field-based motion vectors for interlacedimages is non-trivial. Given the down-sampled DCT coefficients andmapped motion vectors, the data are subject to variable length codingand the reduced resolution bitstream can be formed as is well known.

[0022] It is desired to provide a method for transcoding bitstreams thatovercomes the problems of the prior art methods for spatial resolutionreduction. Furthermore, it is desired to provide a balance betweencomplexity and quality in the transcoder. Furthermore it is desired tocompensate for drift, and provide better up-sampling techniques duringthe transcoding.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

[0023] A method up-samples a compressed bitstream. The compressedbitstream is partially decoding to produce macroblocks. Each macroblockhas DCT coefficients according to a predetermined dimensionality of themacroblock.

[0024] DCT filters are applied to the DCT coefficients of eachmacroblock to generate up-sampled macroblocks for each macroblock, thereis one up-sampled macroblock generated by each filter. Each generatedup-sampled macroblock has the predetermined dimensionality.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

[0025]FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a prior art cascaded transcoder;

[0026]FIG. 2 is a block diagram of a prior art open-loop transcoder forbit-rate reduction;

[0027]FIG. 3 is a block diagram of a prior art closed-loop transcoderfor bit-rate reduction;

[0028]FIG. 4 is a block diagram of a prior art cascaded transcoder forspatial resolution reduction;

[0029]FIG. 5 is a block diagram of a prior art open-loop transcoder forspatial resolution reduction;

[0030]FIG. 6 is a block diagram of prior art motion vector mapping;

[0031]FIG. 7 is a block diagram of a first application transcoding abitstream to a reduced spatial resolution according to the invention;

[0032]FIG. 8 is a block diagram of a second application transcoding abitstream to a reduced spatial resolution according to the invention;

[0033]FIG. 9 is a block diagram of an open-loop transcoder for spatialresolution reduction according to the invention;

[0034]FIG. 10 is a block diagram of a first closed-loop transcoder forspatial resolution reduction with drift compensation in the reducedresolution according to the invention;

[0035]FIG. 11a is a block diagram of a second closed-loop transcoder forspatial resolution reduction with drift compensation in the originalresolution according to the invention;

[0036]FIG. 11b is a block diagram of a third closed-loop transcoder forspatial resolution reduction with drift compensation in the originalresolution according to the invention;

[0037]FIG. 12 is an example of a group of macroblocks containingmacroblock modes, DCT coefficient data, and corresponding motion vectordata;

[0038]FIG. 13 is a block diagram of a group of blocks processoraccording to the invention;

[0039]FIG. 14A is a block diagram of a first method for group of blocksprocessing according to the invention;

[0040]FIG. 14B is block diagram of a second method for group of blocksprocessing according to the invention;

[0041]FIG. 14C is a block diagram of a third method for a group ofblocks processing according to the invention;

[0042]FIG. 15A illustrates a prior art concept of down-sampling in theDCT or spatial domain;

[0043]FIG. 15B is a block diagram of prior art up-sampling in the DCT orspatial domain;

[0044]FIG. 15C is a block diagram of up-sampling in the DCT domainaccording to the invention; and

[0045]FIG. 16 is a diagram of up-sampling in the DCT domain according tothe invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS

[0046] Introduction

[0047] The invention provides a system and method for transcodingcompressed bitstreams of digital video signals to a reduced spatialresolution with minimum drift. First, several applications for contentdistribution that can use the transcoder according to the invention aredescribed. Next, an analysis of a basic method for generating abitstream at a lower spatial resolution is provided. Based on thisanalysis, several alternatives to the base method and the correspondingarchitectures that are associated with each alternative are described.

[0048] A first alternative, see FIG. 9, uses an open-loop architecture,while the other three alternatives, FIGS. 10 and 11a-b, correspond toclosed-loop architectures that provide a means of compensating driftincurred by down-sampling, re-quantization and motion vector truncation.One of the closed-loop architectures performs this compensation in thereduced resolution, while the others perform this compensation in theoriginal resolution in the DCT domain for better quality.

[0049] As will be described in greater detail below, the open-looparchitecture of FIG. 9 is of low complexity. There is no reconstructionloop, no DCT/IDCT blocks, no frame store, and the quality is reasonablefor low picture resolution, and bit-rates. This architecture is suitablefor Internet applications and software implementations. The firstclosed-loop architecture of FIG. 10 is also of moderate complexity. Itincludes a reconstruction loop, IDCT/DCT blocks, and a frame store.Here, the quality can be improved with drift compensation in reducedresolution domain. The second closed-loop architecture of FIG. 11a is ofmoderate complexity. It includes a reconstruction loop, IDCT/DCT blocks,and a frame store. The quality can be improved with drift compensationin the original resolution domain, and does require up-sampling of thereduced resolution frames. The third closed loop architecture uses acorrection signal obtained in the reduced resolution domain.

[0050] To support the architectures according to the present invention,several additional techniques for processing blocks that would otherwisehave groups of macroblock with “mixed” modes at the reduced resolutionare also described.

[0051] A group of blocks, e.g., four, to be down-sampled is considered a“mixed” block when the group of blocks to be down-sampled containsblocks coded in both intra- and inter-modes. In the MPEG standardsI-frames contain only macroblocks coded according to the intra-mode, andP-frames can include intra- and inter-mode coded blocks. These modesneed to be respected, particularly while down-sampling, otherwise thequality of the output can be degraded.

[0052] Also, methods for drift-compensation and up-sampling DCT baseddata are described. These methods are useful for the second and thirdclosed-loop architectures so that operations after the up-sampling canbe performed properly and without additional conversion steps.

[0053] Applications for Reduced Spatial Resolution Transcoding

[0054] The primary target application for the present invention is thedistribution of digital television (DTV) broadcast and Internet contentto devices with low-resolution displays, such as wireless telephones,pagers, and personal digital assistance. MPEG-2 is currently used as thecompression format for DTV broadcast and DVD recording, and MPEG-1content is available over the Internet.

[0055] Because MPEG-4 has been adopted as the compression format forvideo transmission over mobile networks, the present invention dealswith methods for transcoding MPEG-1/2 content to lower resolution MPEG-4content.

[0056]FIG. 7 shows a first example of a multimedia content distributionsystem 700 that uses the invention. The system 700 includes an adaptiveserver 701 connected to clients 702 via an external network 703. As acharacteristics the clients have small-sized displays or are connectedby low bit-rate channels. Therefore, there is a need to reduce theresolution of any content distributed to the clients 702.

[0057] Input source multimedia content 704 is stored in a database 710.The content is subject to a feature extraction and an indexing process720. A database server 740 allows the clients 702 to browse the contentof the database 710 and to make requests for specific content. A searchengine 730 can be used to locate multimedia content. After the desiredcontent has been located, the database server 740 forwards themultimedia content to a transcoder 750 according to the invention.

[0058] The transcoder 750 reads network and client characteristics. Ifthe spatial resolution of the content is higher than the displaycharacteristics of the client, then the method according to theinvention is used to reduce the resolution of the content to match thedisplay characteristics of the client. Also, if the bit-rate on thenetwork channel is less than the bit-rate of the content, the inventioncan also be used.

[0059]FIG. 8 shows a second example of a content distribution system800. The system 800 includes a local “home” network 801, the externalnetwork 703, a broadcast network 803, and the adaptive server 701 asdescribed for FIG. 7. In this application, high-quality input sourcecontent 804 can be transported to clients 805 connected to the homenetwork 801 via the broadcast network 803, e.g., cable, terrestrial orsatellite. The content is received by a set-top box or gateway 820 andstored into a local memory or hard-disk drive (HDD) 830. The receivedcontent can be distributed to the clients 805 within the home. Inaddition, the content can be transcoded 850 to accommodate any clientsthat do not have the capability to decode/display the full resolutioncontent. This can be the case when a high-definition television (HDTV)bitstream is received for a standard-definition television set.Therefore, the content should be transcoded to satisfy clientcapabilities within the home.

[0060] Moreover, if access to the content stored on the HDD 830 isdesired by a low-resolution external client 806 via the external network802, then the transcoder 850 can also be used to deliver low-resolutionmultimedia content to this client.

[0061] Analysis of Base Method

[0062] In order to design a transcoder with varying complexity andquality, the signals generated by the method of FIG. 4 are furtherdescribed and analyzed. With regard to notation in the equations,lowercase variables indicate spatial domain signals, while uppercasevariables represent the equivalent signal in the DCT domain. Thesubscripts on the variables indicates time, while a superscript equal toone denotes a signal that has drift and a superscript equal to twodenotes a signal that is drift free. The drift is introduced throughlossy processes, such as re-quantization, motion vector truncation ordown-sampling. A method for drift compensation is described below.

[0063] I-frames

[0064] Because there is no motion compensated prediction for I-frames,i.e.,

x _(n) ¹ =e _(n) ¹,  (1)

[0065] the signal is down-sampled 410,

y _(n) ¹ =D(x _(n) ¹).  (2)

[0066] Then, in the encoder 120,

g _(n) ² =y _(n) ¹.  (3)

[0067] The signal g_(n) ² is subject to the DCT 440, then quantized 450with quantization parameter Q₂. The quantized signal c_(out) is variablelength coded 460 and written to the transcoded bitstream 402. As part ofthe motion compensation loop in the encoder, c_(out) is inversequantized 470 and subject to the IDCT 480. The reduced resolutionreference signal y_(n) ² 481 is stored into the frame buffer 490 as thereference signal for future frame predictions.

[0068] P-frames

[0069] In the case of P-frames, the identity

x _(n) ¹ =e _(n) ¹ +M _(f)(x _(n−1) ¹)  (4)

[0070] yields the reconstructed full-resolution picture. As with theI-frame, this signal is then down-converted via equation (2). Then, thereduced-resolution residual is generated according to

g _(n) ² =y _(n) ¹ −M _(r)(y _(n−1) ²),  (5)

[0071] which is equivalently expressed as,

g _(n) ² =D(e _(n) ¹)+D(x _(n−1) ¹))−M _(r)(y _(n−1) ²).  (6)

[0072] The signal given by equation (6) represents the reference signalthat the architectures described by this invention approximate. Itshould be emphasized that the complexity in generating this referencesignal is high and is desired to approximate the quality, whileachieving significant complexity reduction.

[0073] Open-Loop Architecture

[0074] Give the approximations,

y _(n−1) ² =y _(n−1) ¹  (7a)

D(M _(f)(x _(n−1) ¹))=M _(r)(D(x _(n−1) ¹))=M _(r)(y _(n−1) ¹)  (7b)

[0075] the reduced resolution residual signal in equation (6) isexpressed as,

g _(n) ² =D(e _(n) ¹).  (8)

[0076] The above equation suggests the open-loop architecture for atranscoder 900 as shown in FIG. 9.

[0077] In the transcoder 900, the incoming bitstream 901 signal isvariable length decoded 910 to generate inverse quantized DCTcoefficients 911, and full resolution motion vectors, mv_(f) 902. Thefull-resolution motion vectors are mapped by the MV mapping 920 toreduced-resolution motion vectors, mv_(r) 903. The quantized DCTcoefficients 911 are inverse quantized, with quantizer Q₁ 930, to yieldsignal E_(n) ¹ 931. This signal is then subject to a group of blocksprocessor 1300 as described in greater detail below. The output of theprocessor 1300 is down-sampled 950 to produce signal G² _(n) 951. Afterdown-sampling, the signal is quantized with quantizer Q₂ 960. Finally,the reduced resolution re-quantized DCT coefficients and motion vectorsare variable length coded 970 and written to the transcoded outputbitstream 902.

[0078] The details and preferred embodiments of the group of blocksprocessor 1300 are described below, but briefly, the purpose of thegroup of blocks processor is to pre-process selected groups ofmacroblocks to ensure that the down-sampling process 950 will notgenerate groups of macroblocks in which its sub-blocks have differentcoding modes, e.g., both inter-and intra-blocks. Mixed coding modeswithin a macroblock are not supported by any known video codingstandards.

[0079] Drift Compensation in Reduced Resolution

[0080] Given only the approximation given by equation (7b), the reducedresolution residual signal in equation (6) is expressed as,

g _(n) ² =D(e _(n) ¹)+M _(r)(y _(n−1) ¹ −y _(n−1) ²)  (9)

[0081] The above equation suggests the closed-loop architecture 1000shown in FIG. 10, which compensates for drift in the reduced resolution.

[0082] In this architecture, the incoming signal 1001 is variable lengthdecoded 1010 to yield quantized DCT coefficients 1011 and fullresolution motion vectors mv_(f) 1012. The full-resolution motionvectors 1012 are mapped by the MV mapping 1020 to yield a set ofreduced-resolution motion vectors, mv_(r) 1021. The quantized DCTcoefficients are inverse quantized 1030, with quantizer Q₁ to yieldsignal E_(n) ¹ 1031. This signal is then subject to the group of blocksprocessor 1300 and down-sampled 1050. After down-sampling 1050, areduced-resolution drift-compensating signal 1051 is added 1060 to thelow-resolution residual 1052 in the DCT domain.

[0083] The signal 1061 is quantized with spatial quantizer Q₂ 1070.Finally, the reduced resolution re-quantized DCT coefficients 1071 andmotion vectors 1021 are variable length coded 1080 to generate theoutput transcoded bitstream 1002.

[0084] The reference frame from which the reduced-resolutiondrift-compensating signal is generated is obtained by an inversequantization 1090 of the re-quantizer residual G² 1071, which is thensubtracted 1092 from the down-sampled residual G_(n) ² 1052. Thisdifference signal is subject to the IDCT 1094 and added 1095 to thelow-resolution predictive component 1096 of the previous macroblockstored in the frame store 1091. This new signal represents thedifference (y_(n−1) ¹y_(n−1) ²) 1097 and is used as the reference forlow-resolution motion compensation for the current block.

[0085] Given the stored reference signal, low-resolution motioncompensation 1098 is performed and the prediction is subject to the DCT1099. This DCT-domain signal is the reduced-resolutiondrift-compensating signal 1051. This operation is performed on amacroblock-by-macroblock basis using the set of low-resolution motionvectors, mv_(r) 1021.

[0086] First Method of Drift Compensation in Original Resolution

[0087] For an approximation,

M _(r)(y _(n−1) ²)=D(M _(f)(U(y _(n−1) ²)))=D(M _(f)(x _(n−1) ²)),  (10)

[0088] the reduced resolution residual signal in equation (6) isexpressed as,

g _(n) ² =D(e _(n) ¹)+M _(f)(x _(n−1) ¹ −x _(n−1) ²).  (11)

[0089] The above equation suggests the closed-loop architecture 1100shown in FIG. 11, which compensates for drift in the original resolutionbitstream.

[0090] In this architecture, the incoming signal 1001 is variable lengthdecoded 1110 to yield quantized DCT coefficients 1111, and fullresolution motion vectors, mv_(f) 1112. The quantized DCT coefficients1111 are inverse quantized 1130, with quantizer Q₁, to yield signalE_(n) ¹ 1131. This signal is then subject to the group of blocksprocessor 1300. After group of blocks processing 1300, anoriginal-resolution drift-compensating signal 1151 is added 1160 to theresidual 1141 in the DCT domain. The signal 1162 is then down-sampled1150, and quantized 1170 with quantizer Q₂. Finally, the reducedresolution re-quantized DCT coefficients 1171, and motion vectors 1121are variable length coded 1180, and written to the transcoded bitstream1102.

[0091] The reference frame from which the original-resolutiondrift-compensating signal 1151 is generated by an inverse quantization1190 of the re-quantizer residual G_(n) ² 1171, which is then up-sampled1191. Here, after the up-sampling the up-sampled signal is subtracted1192 from the original resolution residual 1161. This difference signalis subject to the IDCT 1194, and added 1195 to the original-resolutionpredictive component 1196 of the previous macroblock. This new signalrepresents the difference (x_(n−1) ¹−x_(n−1) ²) 1197, and is used as thereference for motion compensation of the current macroblock in theoriginal resolution.

[0092] Given the reference signal stored in the frame buffer 1181,original-resolution motion compensation 1198 is performed, and theprediction is subject to the DCT 1199. This DCT-domain signal is theoriginal-resolution drift-compensating signal 1151. This operation isperformed on a macroblock-by-macroblock basis using the set oforiginal-resolution motion vectors, mv_(f) 1121.

[0093] Second Method of Drift Compensation in Original Resolution

[0094]FIG. 11b shows an alternative embodiment of the closed looparchitecture of FIG. 11a. Here, the output of the inverse quantization1190 of the re-quantizer residual G_(n) ² 1172 is subtracted 1192 fromthe reduced resolution signal before up-sampling 1191.

[0095] Both drift compensating architectures in the original resolutiondo not use the motion vector approximations in generating the driftcompensating signal 1151. This is accomplished by the use of up-sampling1191. The two alternative architectures mainly differ in the choice ofsignals that are used to generate the difference signal. In the firstmethod, the difference signal represents error due to re-quantizationand resolution conversion, while the difference signal in the secondmethod only considers the error due to re-quantization.

[0096] Because the up-sampled signal is not considered in the futuredecoding of the transcoded bitstream, it is reasonable to exclude anyerror measured by consecutive down-sampling and up-sampling in the driftcompensation signal. However, up-sampling is still employed for tworeasons: to make use of the full-resolution motion vectors 1121 to avoidany further approximation, and so that the drift compensating signal isin the original resolution and can be added 1160 to the incomingresidual 1161 before down-sampling 1150.

[0097] Mixed Block Processor

[0098] The purpose of the group of blocks processor 1300 is topre-process selected macroblocks to ensure that the down-samplingprocess do not generate macroblocks in which its sub-blocks havedifferent coding modes, e.g., inter- and intra-blocks. Mixed codingmodes within macroblocks are not supported by any known video codingstandards.

[0099]FIG. 12 shows an example of a group of macroblocks 1201 that canlead to a group of blocks 1202 in the reduced resolution aftertranscoding 1203. Here, there are three inter-mode blocks, and oneintra-mode block. Note, the motion vector (MV) for the intra-mode blockis zero. Determining whether a particular group of blocks is a mixedgroup, or not, depends only on the macroblock mode. The group of blocksprocessor 1300 considers groups of four macroblocks 1201 that form asingle macroblock 1202 in the reduced resolution. In other words, forthe luminance component, MB(0) 1210 corresponds to sub-block b(0) 1220in the reduced resolution macroblock 1202, and similarly, MB(1) 1211will correspond to b(1) 1221, MB(k) 1212 corresponds to b(2) 1222, andMB(k+1) 1213 corresponds to b(3) 1223, where k is the number ofmacroblocks per row in the original resolution. Chrominance componentsare handled in a similar manner that is consistent with luminance modes.

[0100] A group of MB modes determine whether the group of blocksprocessor 1300 should process a particular MB. The group of blocks isprocessed if the group contains at least one intra-mode block, and atleast one inter-mode block. After a macroblock is selected, its DCTcoefficients and motion vector data are subject to modification.

[0101]FIG. 1300 shows the components of the group of blocks processor1300. For a selected group of mixed blocks 1301, the group of blocksprocessor performs mode mapping 1310, motion vector modification 1320,and DCT coefficient modification 1330 to produce an output non-mixedblock 1302. Given that the group of blocks 1301 has been identified, themodes of the macroblocks are modified so that all macroblocks areidentical. This is done according to a pre-specified strategy to matchthe modes of each sub-block in a reduced resolution block.

[0102] In accordance with the chosen mode mapping, the MV data are thensubject to modification 1320. Possible modifications that agree withcorresponding mode mappings are described in detail below for FIG.14A-C. Finally, given both the new MB mode and the MV data, thecorresponding DCT coefficients are also modified 1330 to agree with themapping.

[0103] In a first embodiment of the group of blocks processor as shownin FIG. 14A, the MB modes of the group of blocks 1301 are modified to beinter-mode by the mode mapping 1310. Therefore, the MV data for theintra-blocks are reset to zero by the motion vector processing, and theDCT coefficients corresponding to intra-blocks are also reset to zero bythe DCT processing 1330. In this way, such sub-blocks that have beenconverted are replicated with data from the corresponding block in thereference frame.

[0104] In a second embodiment of the group of blocks processor as shownin FIG. 14B, the MB modes of the groups of mixed block are modified tobe to inter-mode by the mapping 1310. However, in contrast to the firstpreferred embodiment, the MV data for intra-MB's are predicted. Theprediction is based on the data in neighboring blocks, which can includeboth texture and motion data. Based on this predicted motion vector, anew residual for the modified block is calculated. The final step 1320resets the inter-DCT coefficients to intra-DCT coefficients.

[0105] In a third embodiment shown in FIG. 14C, the MB modes of thegrouped of blocks are modified 1310 to intra-mode. In this case, thereis no motion information associated with the reduced-resolutionmacroblock, therefore all associated motion vector data are reset 1320to zero. This is necessary to perform in the transcoder because themotion vectors of neighboring blocks are predicted from the motion ofthis block. To ensure proper reconstruction in the decoder, the MV datafor the group of blocks must be reset to zero in the transcoder. Thefinal step 1330 generates intra-DCT coefficients to replace theinter-DCT coefficients, as above.

[0106] It should be noted that to implement the second and thirdembodiments described above, a decoding loop that reconstructs tofull-resolution can be used. This reconstructed data can be used as areference to convert the DCT coefficients between intra- andinter-modes, or inter- and intra-modes. However, the use of such adecoding loop is not required. Other implementations can perform theconversions within the drift compensating loops.

[0107] For a sequence of frames with a small amount of motion, and alow-level of detail the low complexity strategy of FIG. 14A can be used.Otherwise, the equally complex strategies of either FIG. 14b or FIG. 14cshould be used. The strategy of FIG. 14c provides the best quality.

[0108] Drift Compensation with Block Processing

[0109] It should be noted that the group of block processor 1300 canalso be used to control or minimize drift. Because intra coded blocksare not subject to drift, the conversion of inter-coded blocks tointra-coded blocks lessens the impact of drift.

[0110] As a first step 1350 of FIG. 14C, the amount of drift in thecompressed bitstream is measured. In the closed-loop architectures, thedrift can be measured according to the energy of the difference signalgenerated by 1092 and 1192 or the drift compensating signal stored in1091 and 1191. Computing the energy of a signal is a well-known method.The energy that is computed accounts for various approximations,including re-quantization, down-sampling and motion vector truncation.

[0111] Another method for computing the drift, which is also applicableto open-loop architectures, estimates the error incurred by truncatedmotion vectors. It is known that half-pixel motion vectors in theoriginal resolution lead to large reconstruction errors when theresolution is reduced. Full-pixel motion vectors are not subject to sucherrors because they can still be mapped correctly to half-pixellocations. Given this, one possibility to measure the drift is to recordthe percentage of half-pixel motion vectors. However, because the impactof the motion vector approximation depends on the complexity of thecontent, another possibility is that the measured drift be a function ofthe residual components that are associated with blocks havinghalf-pixel motion vectors.

[0112] The methods that use the energy of the difference signal andmotion vector data to measure drift can be used in combination, and canalso be considered over sub-regions in the frame. Consideringsub-regions in the frame is advantageous because the location ofmacroblocks that benefit most by drift compensation method can beidentified. To use these methods in combination, the drift is measuredby the energy of the difference signal, or drift compensating signal formacroblocks having half-pixel motion vectors in the original resolution.

[0113] As a second step, the measured value of drift is translated intoan “intra refresh rate” 1351 that is used as input to the group ofblocks processor 1300. Controlling the percentage of intra-coded blockshas been considered in the prior art for encoding of video forerror-resilient transmission, see for example “Analysis of VideoTransmission over Lossy Channels,” Journal of Selected Areas ofCommunications, by Stuhlmuller, et al, 2000. In that work, aback-channel from the receiver to the encoder is assumed to communicatethe amount of loss incurred by the transmission channel, and theencoding of intra-coded blocks is performed directly from the source toprevent error propagation due to lost data in a predictive codingscheme.

[0114] In contrast, the invention generates new intra-blocks in thecompressed domain for an already encoded video, and the conversion frominter- to intra-mode is accomplished by the group of blocks processor1300.

[0115] If the drift exceeds a threshold amount of drift, the group ofblocks processor 1300 of FIG. 14c is invoked to convert an inter-modeblock to an intra-mode block. In this case, the conversion is beperformed at a fixed and pre-specified intra refresh rate.Alternatively, conversion can be done at an intra refresh rate that isproportional to the amount of drift measured. Also, rate-distortioncharacteristics of the signal can be taken into account to makeappropriate trade-offs between the intra refresh rate and quantizersused for coding intra and inter blocks.

[0116] It should be noted that the invention generates new intra-blocksin the compressed domain, and this form of drift compensation can beperformed in any transcoder with or without resolution reduction.

[0117] Down-Sampling

[0118] Any down-sampling method can be used by the transcoder accordingto the invention. However, the preferred down-sampling method isaccording to U.S. Pat. No. 5,855,151, “Method and apparatus fordown-converting a digital signal,” issued on Nov 10, 1998 to Sun et al,incorporated herein by reference.

[0119] The concept of this down-sampling method is shown in FIG. 15A. Agroup includes four 2^(N)×2^(N) DCT blocks 1501. That is, the size ofthe group is 2^(N+1)×2^(N+1). A “frequency synthesis” or filtering 1510is applied to the group of blocks to generate a single 2^(N)×2^(N) DCTblock 1511. From this synthesized block, a down-sampled DCT block 1512can be extracted.

[0120] This operation has been described for the DCT domain using 2Doperations, but the operations can also be performed using separable 1Dfilters. Also, the operations can be completely performed in the spatialdomain. Equivalent spatial domain filters can be derived using themethods described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/035,969, “Threelayer scalable decoder and method of decoding,” filed on Mar. 6, 1998 byVetro et al, incorporated herein by reference.

[0121] The main advantage of using the down-sampling method in thetranscoder according to the invention is that correct dimension ofsub-blocks in the macroblock are obtained directly, e.g., from four 8×8DCT blocks, a single 8×8 block can be formed. On the other hand,alternate prior art methods for down-sampling produce down-sampled datain a dimension that does not equal the required dimension of theoutgoing sub-block of a macroblock, e.g., from four 8×8 DCT blocks, afour 4×4 DCT blocks is obtained. Then, an additional step is needed tocompose a single 8×8 DCT block.

[0122] The above filters are useful components to efficiently implementthe architecture shown in FIG. 11 that requires up-sampling. Moregenerally, the filters derived here can be applied to any system thatrequires arithmetic operations on up-sampled DCT data, with or withoutresolution reduction or drift compensation.

[0123] Up-Sampling

[0124] Any means of prior art up-sampling can be used in the presentinvention. However, Vetro, et al., in U.S. patent application “Threelayer scalable decoder and method of decoding,” see above, states thatthe optimal up-sampling method is dependent on the method ofdown-sampling. Therefore, the use an up-sampling filters x_(u) thatcorresponds to the down-sampling filters x_(d) is preferred, where therelation between the two filters is given by,

x _(u) =x _(d) ^(T)(x _(d) x _(d) ^(T))⁻¹  (12)

[0125] There are two problems associated with the filters derived fromthe above equations. First, the filters are only applicable in thespatial domain filters because the DCT filters are not invertable. But,this is a minor problem because the corresponding spatial domain filterscan be derived, then converted to the DCT-domain.

[0126] However, the second problem is that the up-sampling filtersobtained in this way correspond to the process shown in FIG. 15B. Inthis process, for example, an 2^(N)×2^(N) block 1502 is up-sampled 1520to a single 2^(N+1)×2^(N+1) block 1530. If up-sampling is performedentirely in the spatial domain, there is no problem. However, if theup-sampling is performed in the DCT domain, one has a 2^(N+1)×2^(N+1)DCT block to deal with, i.e., with one DC component. This is notsuitable for operations that require the up-sampled DCT block to be instandard MB format, i.e., four 2^(N)×2^(N) DCT blocks, where N is 4.That is, the up-sampled blocks have the same format or dimensionality asthe original blocks, there just are more of them.

[0127] The above method of up-sampling in the DCT domain is not suitablefor use in the transcoder described in this invention. In FIG. 11a,up-sampled DCT data are subtracted from DCT data output from the mixedblock processor 1300. The two DCT data of the two blocks must have thesame format. Therefore, a filter that can perform the up-samplingillustrated in FIG. 15C is required. Here, the single 2^(N)×2^(N) block1502 is up-sampled 1540 to four 2^(N)×2^(N) blocks 1550. Because such afilter has not yet been considered and does not exist in the known priorart, an expression for the ID case is derived in the following.

[0128] With regard to notation in the following equations, lowercasevariables indicate spatial domain signals, while uppercase variablesrepresent the equivalent signal in the DCT domain.

[0129] As illustrated in FIG. 16, C 1601 represents the DCT block to beup-sampled in the DCT domain, and c 1602 represents the equivalent blockin the spatial domain. The two blocks are related to one another throughthe definition of the N-pt DCT and IDCT 1603, see Rao and Yip, “DiscreteCosine Transform: Algorithms, Advantages and Applications,” Academic,Boston, 1990. For convenience, the expressions are also given below.

[0130] The DCT definition is $\begin{matrix}{{C_{q} = {z_{q}\sqrt{\frac{2}{N}}{\sum\limits_{i = 0}^{N - 1}{c_{i}{\cos \left( \frac{\left( {{2i} + 1} \right)q\quad \pi}{2N} \right)}}}}},{a\quad n\quad d}} & (13)\end{matrix}$

[0131] the IDCT definition is $\begin{matrix}{{c_{j} = {\sqrt{\frac{2}{N}}{\sum\limits_{q = 0}^{N - 1}{z_{q}C_{q}{\cos \left( \frac{\left( {{2j} + 1} \right)q\quad \pi}{2N} \right)}}}}},{w\quad h\quad e\quad r\quad e}} & (14) \\{z_{q} = \left\{ {\begin{matrix}{\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}};} & {q = 0} \\{1;} & {q \neq 0}\end{matrix}.} \right.} & (15)\end{matrix}$

[0132] Given the above, block E 1610 represents the up-sampled DCT blockbased on filtering C with X_(u) 1611, and e represents the up-sampledspatial domain block-based on filtering c with the x_(u) 1621 given byequation (12). Note that e and E are related through a 2N-pt DCT/IDCT1630. The input-output relations of the filtered input are given by,$\begin{matrix}{{{E_{k} = {\sum\limits_{q = 0}^{N - 1}{C_{q}{X_{u}\left( {k,q} \right)}}}};{0 \leq k \leq {{2N} - 1}}},{a\quad n\quad d}} & \text{(16a)} \\{{e_{i} = {\sum\limits_{j = 0}^{N - 1}{c_{j}{x_{u}\left( {i,j} \right)}}}};{0 \leq i \leq {N - 1.}}} & \text{(16b)}\end{matrix}$

[0133] As shown in FIG. 16, the desired DCT blocks are denoted by A 1611and B 1612. The aim of this derivation is to derive filters X_(ca) 1641and X_(cb) 1642 that can be used to compute A and B directly from C,respectively.

[0134] As the first step, equation (14) is substituted into equation(16b). The resulting expression is the spatial domain output e as afunction of the DCT input C, which is given by, $\begin{matrix}{e_{i} = {\sum\limits_{q = 0}^{N - 1}{{C_{q}\left\lbrack {\sqrt{\frac{2}{N}}z_{q}{\sum\limits_{j = 0}^{N - 1}{{x_{u}\left( {i,j} \right)} \cdot {\cos \left( \frac{\left( {{2j} + 1} \right)q\quad \pi}{2N} \right)}}}} \right\rbrack}.}}} & (17)\end{matrix}$

[0135] To express A and B in terms of C using equation (17), the spatialdomain relationship between a, b and e is

a ₁ e ₁; 0≦i≦N−1 b _(1−N) e _(i) ; N≦i≦2N−1′  (18)

[0136] where i in the above denotes the spatial domain index. The DCTdomain expression for a is given by, $\begin{matrix}{A_{k} = {z_{k}\sqrt{\frac{2}{N}}{\sum\limits_{i = 0}^{N - 1}{a_{i}{{\cos \left( \frac{\left( {{2i} + 1} \right)k\quad \pi}{2N} \right)}.}}}}} & (19)\end{matrix}$

[0137] Using equations (17)-(19) gives, $\begin{matrix}{A_{k} = {\sum\limits_{q = 0}^{N - 1}{C_{q}\left\lbrack {\frac{2}{N}z_{k}z_{q}{\sum\limits_{i = 0}^{N - 1}{{\cos \left( \frac{\left( {{2i} + 1} \right)k\quad \pi}{2N} \right)}{\sum\limits_{j = 0}^{N - 1}{{x_{u}\left( {i,j} \right)}{\cos \left( \frac{\left( {{2j} + 1} \right)q\quad \pi}{2N} \right)}}}}}} \right\rbrack}}} & (20)\end{matrix}$

[0138] which is equivalently expressed as $\begin{matrix}{{A_{k} = {\sum\limits_{q = 0}^{N - 1}{C_{q}{X_{c\quad a}\left( {k,q} \right)}}}}{w\quad h\quad e\quad r\quad e}} & (21) \\{{X_{c\quad a}\left( {k,q} \right)} = {\frac{2}{N}z_{k}z_{q}{\sum\limits_{i = 0}^{N - 1}{{\cos \left( \frac{\left( {{2i} + 1} \right)k\quad \pi}{2N} \right)}{\sum\limits_{j = 0}^{N - 1}{{x_{u}\left( {i,j} \right)}{{\cos \left( \frac{\left( {{2j} + 1} \right)q\quad \pi}{2N} \right)}.}}}}}}} & (22)\end{matrix}$

[0139] Similarly, $\begin{matrix}{B_{k} = {\sum\limits_{q = 0}^{N - 1}{C_{q}{\quad\left\lbrack {\frac{2}{N}z_{k}z_{q}{\sum\limits_{i = 0}^{N - 1}{{\cos \left( \frac{\left( {{2i} + 1} \right)k\quad \pi}{2N} \right)}{\sum\limits_{j = 0}^{N - 1}{{x_{u}\left( {{i + N},j} \right)}{\cos \left( \frac{\left( {{2j} + 1} \right)q\quad \pi}{2N} \right)}}}}}} \right\rbrack}}}} & (23)\end{matrix}$

[0140] which is equivalently expressed as $\begin{matrix}{{B_{k} = {\sum\limits_{q = 0}^{N - 1}{C_{q}{X_{c\quad b}\left( {k,q} \right)}}}}{w\quad h\quad e\quad r\quad e}} & (24) \\{{X_{c\quad b}\left( {k,q} \right)} = {\frac{2}{N}z_{k}z_{q}{\sum\limits_{i = 0}^{N - 1}{{\cos \left( \frac{\left( {{2i} + 1} \right)k\quad \pi}{2N} \right)}{\sum\limits_{j = 0}^{N - 1}{{x_{u}\left( {{i + N},j} \right)}{{\cos \left( \frac{\left( {{2j} + 1} \right)q\quad \pi}{2N} \right)}.}}}}}}} & (25)\end{matrix}$

[0141] The above filters can then be used to up-sample a single block ofa given dimension to a larger number of blocks, each having the samedimension as the original block. More generally, the filters derivedhere can be applied to any system that requires arithmetic operations onup-sampled DCT data.

[0142] To implement the filters given by equations (22) and (25), it isnoted that each expression provides a k×q matrix of filter taps, where kis the index of an output pixel and q is the index of an input pixel.For 1D data, the output pixels are computed as a matrix multiplication.For 2D data, two steps are taken. First, the data is up-sampled in afirst direction, e.g., horizontally. Then, the horizontally up-sampleddata is up-sampled in the second direction, e.g., vertically. The orderof direction for up-sampling can be reversed without having any impacton the results.

[0143] For horizontal up-sampling, each row in a block is operated onindependently and treated as an N-dimensional input vector. Each inputvector is filtered according to equations (21) and (24). The output ofthis process will be two standard DCT blocks.

[0144] For vertical up-sampling, each column is operated onindependently and again treated as an N-dimensional input vector. Aswith the horizontal up-sampling, each input vector is filtered accordingto equations (21) and (24). The output of this process will be fourstandard DCT blocks as shown in FIG. 15C.

[0145] Syntax Conversion

[0146] As stated for the above applications of the transcoder accordingto the invention, one of the key applications for this invention isMPEG-2 to MPEG-4 conversion. Thus far, the focus is mainly on thearchitectures used for drift compensation when transcoding to a lowerspatial resolution and additional techniques that support the conversionto lower spatial resolutions.

[0147] However, syntax conversion between standard coding schemes isanother important issue. Because we believe that this has been describedby patent applications already pending, we do not provide any furtherdetails on this part.

[0148] Although the invention has been described by way of examples ofpreferred embodiments, it is to be understood that various otheradaptations and modifications can be made within the spirit and scope ofthe invention. Therefore, it is the object of the appended claims tocover all such variations and modifications as come within the truespirit and scope of the invention.

We claim:
 1. A method for transcoding groups of macroblocks of apartially decoded input bitstream, the groups including intra-mode andinter-mode macroblocks, and each macroblock including DCT coefficients,and a motion vector, comprising: mapping the modes of each group ofmacroblocks to be identical only if there is an inter-mode block and anintra-mode macroblock in the group, and modifying the DCT coefficientsand the motion vector in accordance with the mapping for each changedmacroblock; and down-sampling each group of macroblocks to generatereduced-resolution macroblock for an output compressed bitstream.
 2. Themethod of claim 1 wherein the mode of each changed macroblock is mappedto inter-mode, and the motion vector and the DCT coefficients of eachchanged macroblock is set to zero if the bitstream has a relativelysmall amount of motion.
 3. The method of claim 1 wherein the mode ofeach changed macroblock is mapped to inter-mode, and the motion vectorof the changed block is predicted, and the DCT coefficients of thechanged macroblock are converted to inter-mode if the bitstream has arelatively large amount of motion.
 4. The method of claim 1 wherein themode of each changed macroblock is mapped to intra-mode, and the motionvector of the changed macroblock is set to zero, and the DCTcoefficients of the changed macroblock are converted to intra-mode ifthe bitstream has a relatively large amount of motion.
 5. The method ofclaim 1 wherein the down-sampling includes mapping the motion vector toa low-resolution motion vector and further comprising: variable lengthdecoding a compressed bitstream to generate inverse DCT coefficients andthe motion vector of the partially decoded bit stream; inversequantizing the inverse DCT coefficients using a first spatial quantizerto obtain the DCT coefficients; quantizing each reduced-resolutionmacroblock using a second spatial quantizer; and variable length codingeach quantized reduced-resolution macroblock and the low-resolutionmotion vector.
 6. The method of claim 1 further comprising: generating areduced-resolution drift-compensating signal for each down-sampledmacroblock; and adding the reduced-resolution drift-compensating signalto each down-sampled macroblock to compensate for drift in the outputcompressed bitstream.
 7. The method of claim 1 further comprising:generating a full-resolution drift compensating signal for eachdown-sampled macroblock; adding each full-resolution drift-compensatingsignal to each macroblock of the group.
 8. The method of claim 7 furthercomprising: subtracting an inverse quantized signal and up-sampledsignal from an original resolution reference signal to generate thefull-resolution signal.
 9. The method of claim 7 further comprising:subtracting an inverse quantized signal from a reduced resolutionreference signal; and up-sampling the reduced resolution differencesignal to generate the full-resolution signal.
 10. The method of claim 7further comprising: subtracting an inverse quantized and up-sampledsignal from an original resolution reference signal to generate thefull-resolution signal.
 11. The method of claim 1 further comprising:generating a reduced-resolution difference signal for each down-sampledmacroblock; up-sampling each reduced-resolution difference signal to afull-resolution drift-compensation signal; and adding eachfull-resolution drift-compensating signal to each macroblock of thegroup.
 12. The method of claim 1 further comprising: generating afull-resolution difference signal for each down-sampled macroblock; andadding each full-resolution drift-compensating signal to each macroblockof the group.
 13. The method of claim 1 wherein each macroblock includes2^(N)×2^(N) pixels, and the down-sampling further comprises: filteringthe group of 2^(N)×2^(N) macroblocks to generate a single 2^(N)×2^(N)macroblock.
 14. The method of claim 1 wherein the partially decodedinput bitstream is in MPEG-2 format, and the compressed output bitstreamis in MPEG-4 format.
 15. The method of claim 1 wherein the transcodingis performed in a adaptive server of a multimedia content distributionsystem.
 16. The method of claim 1 wherein the transcoding is performedin a transcoder of a home network.
 17. The method of claim 1 furthercomprising: applying a plurality of DCT filters to the DCT coefficientsof each macroblock to generate a plurality of up-sampled macroblocks foreach macroblock, there being one up-sampled macroblock generated by eachfilter, and where the macroblock and up-sampled macroblock has anidentical dimensionality.
 18. An apparatus for transcoding groups ofmacroblocks of a partially decoded input bitstream, the groups includingintra-mode and inter-mode macroblocks, and each macroblock including DCTcoefficients, and a motion vector, comprising: means for mapping themodes of each group of macroblocks to be identical only if there is aninter-mode block and an intra-mode macroblock in the group, andmodifying the DCT coefficients and the motion vector in accordance withthe mapping for each changed macroblock; and means for down-samplingeach group of macroblocks to generate reduced-resolution macroblock foran output compressed bitstream.